Seattle Fair Looks to the 21st Century
sun's flaming geysers of hydrogen: Passing
Mars, we wondered with the narrator wheth
er "Martian flowers bloom ungathered, wait
ing for man one day to walk here and see their
beauty."
Leaving the planets behind, our ship sailed
on through the Milky Way as fast as ten tril
lion times the speed of light and set its course
for Andromeda, a spiral galaxy, and un
named galaxies beyond.
Finally we turned and headed for home.
"We glory in the warm splendor of earth
our shelter; our place to be born, to live, to
prosper," said the narrator. "But now we
know: Earth is only a single note in the vast
symphony of the universe, and man is child
not only of earth-but of all the cosmos."
An imaginary journey? Yes; one possible
only through the magic of film and a pro
jector fitted with the world's largest wide
angle movie lens. But still it was a journey
based on concepts developed by astronomers
through the ages (opposite).
We rested on the pavilion's terrace and
watched the fountains play.
"I wonder what variety of flowers might
bloom on Mars?" Mother asked. Her question
was about space, but her eyes were on the
tulips, bright pools of red and yellow set in
huge concrete bowls.
One building of the United States Science
Pavilion provides an exciting progress re
port on 28 diverse research projects. Each
exhibit poses a question.
What is the shape of the earth? We watch
Cosmic wonders appear above the heads
of visitors in the Spacearium. Using the
world's largest cinematic projector lens and
screen, the show simulates a two-billion
light-year journey through space. Here,
travelers range beyond the Milky Way. The
trip seems so real that spectators grasp rail
ings for support in the darkened room.
Monster of the deep exchanges stares with
a sailor in the French Exhibit. The model
copies a water-jet-propelled diving saucer
developed by Capt. Jacques-Yves Cousteau,
with National Geographic Society support,
to explore the oceans down to a thousand
feet. Eyes are twin portholes through which
crewmen scan the depths.
as technicians track Transit IV-A, a satel
lite put into orbit in June, 1961. Carrying the
first nuclear-powered generator ever sent into
space, Transit provides earthbound plotters
with the most accurate measurement of our
planet yet. Future Transits will provide pre
cise fixes for ships at sea.
Where do cosmic rays come from? Cosmic
rays from space shoot unfelt through our bod
ies and light up detectors set in the floor be
neath our feet. With such devices scientists
have discovered particles with energies a
billion times greater than any we have yet
produced on earth.
How do salmon migrate thousands of miles
to their place of birth to spawn? We peer into
a tank of water and see young silver salmon
following signals of light, pattern, and color,
clues to the factors that guide them on their
wide-ranging journeys.
What leads to mother-child affection?
We watch a mite of a monkey clinging to a
terry-cloth dummy "mother" (page 415), giv
ing it more time than it gives to a wire
frame "mother" that offers a nursing bottle
of milk. To this near-relative of man, warmth
and softness apparently are more basic to
affection than is nourishment.
Praise From a Teaching Machine
Can we learn from teaching machines?
We sit down before one-a projection screen
and the typewriter keys of a computer. We
read from the screen a paragraph of an ocea
nography lesson. A question on the text and
four possible answers to it follow. We pick an
answer and type its number on the keyboard.
The machine clatters out a message: "You
are right. Very good. Proceed to the next
paragraph."
We feel pleased. We have learned from a
teaching machine.
The Pavilion's Junior Laboratory of Science
-itself
a kind of teaching machine-gave
Fair-going children, and me, a chance to
learn science by doing (pages 420-21).
After waiting in line amid a sea of small
faces, I took my turn at the "light ray ma
chine," manipulating convex and concave
lenses, mirrors, and prisms on a revolving
wheel to bend and reflect a beam of light.
I split water into hydrogen and oxygen
with an electric current and then reunited
the gases with an electric spark. I shot a "rock
et" from a spinning model earth toward a
revolving moon, and, missing, I experienced
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